Social Psychological Theories of Aggression

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Social Psychological Theories of Aggression

With increasing violence in the Big Brother House I have been asked to

create a report that explains this violence occurring in the Big

Brother House in terms of two or more social psychological theories.

In general the violence in the big brother house is escalating and

theories need to be brought to the attention of the media bosses in

order to explain this aggression. The violence does not need to be

stopped as the house mates are not breaking any of the Big Brother

rules behaving in this manner. Violence on this show can not be viewed

as a negative aspect as it increases the number of viewers. However it

does need to be explained logically.

One explanation could be the Social Learning Theory.

In order for such learning to take place a person must observe persons

behaviour and imitate this in the future. The concept of

identification is also important as the individual is more likely to

imitate some he/she identifies with, in this case it could be another

house mate or perhaps previous contestants on the Big Brother show.

For this there are three stages

· The Registration Stage, where the observer must pay attention to the

model. The observer's attention is influenced by characteristics of

both the observer and the model.

· The Storage Stage is when the observer may code and organise the

information in relation to any reinforces present, past experiences,

expectation, relevance etc…

· And finally the Retrieval Stage is when the reinforcers determine

whether the behaviour is imitated and the observer's performance will

be dependant on the person's ability to perf...

... middle of paper ...

... the Big Brother

contestants personal goals would involve daily tasks and placing

people up for eviction. When we attain these goals the energy is

released, and when we fail or the goal is blocked (for e.g. the person

put up for eviction is not evicted) then the energy becomes built-up

(frustration). This must be released and so Dollard suggested that it

was via aggression. This then parallels with Freud's explanation of

aggression in which a person becomes aggressive from frustration and

this anger is projected onto other, less powerful people or objects

(scapegoat theory). The projection is a way of protecting a person's

ego from self-aggression.

This projected aggression in a confined area with other people that

share that same space leads to arguments and (as a result) aggression

within the Big Brother house.

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